Krzysztof Gwizdała: – Good morning. Our guest is Rafał Betlejewski. Hi, Rafał!

Rafał Betlejewski: – Hi, it’s very nice to be here.

Tell me, what are we really celebrating on December 25?

It depends on what someone feels like celebrating. In Poland, as a predominantly Catholic society, we are now celebrating Christmas, which we understand as a commemoration of the birth of Jesus Christ.

But Jesus Christ is probably the same kind of historical figure as Romeo and Juliet or Sherlock Holmes, isn’t he?

Or Krishna, or Zeus, or any other deity you might take from the pantheon of gods around the world, of which there are thousands. In Poland, we fall prey to the illusion that Jesus Christ is a historical figure. In my opinion, that is an illusion. It is probably enough to familiarize yourself with what we mean by the historicity hypothesis and the mythicist hypothesis concerning Jesus. Compare these two propositions and you will understand what historical evidence or premises support the probability of each hypothesis. In my opinion, it is very easy, or can be done very quickly, to conclude that the mythicist hypothesis concerning Jesus is at least as probable, and perhaps more probable, than the historicity hypothesis. Besides, if we examine the historicity hypothesis—if any of us Catholics raised in this faith wanted to state for ourselves what this hypothesis actually says, what it means that Jesus is a historical figure—then what? What do we know about his biography based on sources or on some rational historical premises? It turns out that there is very little in this hypothesis. We know very little. We assume most things, and take even more simply from religious legend. So the question is whether this seems probable to us.

365 Religious Lessons. But this is an excerpt from the book “Religious Lessons for Christmas.” Here you can find many stories, described throughout December. Each day contains one story. Among other things, you can read here that Christ is a conglomerate of various earlier stories.

That’s right. In the book I wrote—the larger book, because what you showed is a December section—I develop many of these themes. Among other things, I offer a diagnosis that seems quite accurate to me. Christianity is a kind of cultural Frankenstein. Something sewn together from many different fragments: an arm attached from one source, a leg from something else. And all of it was brought to life using the energy of the declining Roman Empire and transformed into a form of institutional power, or even religious dictatorship. As a result, it became widespread and binding, and it was difficult to oppose. Christianity became a dominant form not only of religion, but of thinking in general.

Rafał, I have a question. When you read the individual sections (365 Religious Lessons – editor’s note) and become familiar with them, everything seems so logical. Tell me, why have people not known about this until now? Was it some kind of secret knowledge? Did the internet only recently make it accessible to us?

It seems to me that two factors come together here. First, it is not secret knowledge. This knowledge has been available since, let’s say, the 19th century. From the 19th century onward, various researchers and historians began to question a certain prevailing religious legend or myth. However, the dominant factor that meant we are only beginning to talk about this today was the Church’s dictatorship, dominance, or even, I would say, ideological tyranny. First, it meant that this discussion was essentially available only in academic circles. Second, even most academics considered it their task to prove the history presented in the Bible rather than subject it to careful analysis. I call this a kind of cultural bias—bias, from the English word for partiality. As Europe, we were subjected to this cultural bias, and as a result we did not discuss the subject. Today this is changing. It began to change along with fairly critical historical, archaeological and literary analysis of the Jewish Bible, that is, the Torah and Tanakh (תנ״ך). Now it is also beginning to happen within Christianity, that is, within the story of Jesus.

Have you encountered the claim that these are Christmas holidays, so why do atheists celebrate them at all instead of going to work? Why do you concern yourselves with our holidays at all?

Of course I have encountered that claim. I encounter it at every turn. Today on Facebook I was talking to several people who rather categorically deny me the right to take a different approach to these holidays or to think about them differently. “These are our holidays,” they say. “You have no right to these holidays; if you don’t like them, go to work or invent some other holidays for yourselves,” and so on. I understand this as fitting into a certain context, or a broader context, of Catholic or Christian thinking. Jesus is the way and the truth; only through Jesus can we enter the kingdom of heaven, and so on. Everything else is simply false; it is not the truth. Only Christianity has the right here to say what is true, what constitutes truth, and so on. Meanwhile, when you look behind the scenes of these claims, it turns out that these holidays, like virtually all Christian holidays, are a conglomerate of various cultural borrowings that make up what we today consider Christmas. And Christmas looked completely different 100 years ago, or 105 years ago, or 200 or 500 years ago. It was celebrated differently, and even on different dates. At first, Christmas was celebrated sometime in August or even May. There were Christian teachers who claimed that this holiday should not be celebrated at all. It simply developed, like all religious observances and rituals, and changed over time.

Because December is precisely the time when the sun is above the horizon for the shortest part of the day…

Christians had to solve the problem that the Gospel does not say when Jesus was born. So a feast of conception was adopted, sometime in spring, after which nine months pass. It was decided that since we have the winter solstice here, the rebirth of the sun… Jesus was incorporated into solar symbolism, into the symbolism of the zodiac, which is a much older religious tool that links what happens in the heavens, what we see in the cosmos, with human fate, with a certain prediction of events in the world, and so on. Jesus was incorporated into this; all this solar symbolism can be discovered in Jesus. The 12 apostles obviously refer to the zodiac. The zodiac, of course, comes from the astronomical calendar.

Rafał, I have to show you something I received today. Fresh and warm. You probably know what it is…

Oh… I’m very pleased.

A calendar for next year. A tear-off one. And look, every day is described. On each day we can, for example, learn something. I happened to open it at February 8, Wednesday: what is the symbol of the zodiac, just as it is of Christianity? The cross. The zodiacal cross. On the next page, when you look from the back, there is a fuller explanation. Tell us something more about this calendar.

You know, it is a return to the beginning of this idea. The title of the book, “365 Religious Lessons,” comes from the liturgical calendar. The church year is divided into liturgical events. Each day has appropriate commemorations, feasts, celebrations and so on. At the very beginning, I thought I would refer to the liturgical calendar. It turned out to be impossible, which is why the book you have—it is very large—had to break with a certain way of thinking about lessons as articles that conclude a given subject, because it would have become so extensive that it could not have been published. So I changed the format of the lessons; they are now certain bullets (arrows – editor’s note) arising from the text. But the idea remained, and we returned to it when publishing this tear-off calendar. In my modest opinion, this tear-off calendar is a kind of work of art. Using a traditional form, I give it completely new content. Content à rebours (the other way around, upside down), because we know from our grandmothers’ tables or sideboards such calendars that tell stories about various saints and church events. Here we have a calendar that every day asks whether there is some reflection on the Church’s lies.

It opened to June 1: the commandment “You shall not commit adultery” omits the prohibition of sexual violence, rape and abuse, especially child abuse in the Church.

That’s the truth.

Yes, but until fairly recently there was apparently also a rule that a marriage in the Vatican could be entered into with a twelve-year-old girl…That’s right. In the past, marriage was not a sacrament at all. It was not considered a holy union until the 12th or even 13th century. Much more important were people’s relationships with the Church, that is, with Jesus. Celibacy—enforced celibacy. The obsessive demand for virginity, for example. Marriage was, I would say, a secular union that the Church was largely uninterested in.

It only became a sacrament in about the 12th century, I think.

Exactly. Along with tightening the rules concerning celibacy. Celibacy had also not previously been such a binding dogma or regulation.

Now, when you listen to media reports, it seems that it is not really all that binding either…

That is my impression: celibacy never really became binding Church doctrine.

So many things… The Church says certain things, priests pass them on, but they live completely differently, and the private reality within the Church is entirely different from what is presented from the pulpit.

Fortunately, there are kind priests, good priests, decent priests…

Fortunately? But does that mean it is an argument that religion is generally okay? And that the Church is okay?

No, no, no. I mean that every community produces, I would say, different kinds of people. In that sense, I would not want to give the impression that I condemn everyone outright. I do believe, however, that it is difficult to maintain an honest, ethically and morally honest attitude while being part of the institutional Church. I think that is very difficult to do. But on the other hand, when I spoke with my mother, who is an art historian and was therefore connected with many church buildings, since in Poland they make up the main substance of what we call art history, she really did deal with many priests who tried, in some honest way, to preserve these churches, organs and so on. However, it is also true that most of these honest priests are on the sidelines. One ends up somewhere in the provinces, restoring some deteriorating churches; another works with troubled young people in distant districts of a city. All those who are closer to the center, closer to the curia, closer to the bishopric—unfortunately, I do not have the best opinion of them.

Rafał, tell me one more thing: where can people buy the calendar, especially the one for the new year?

I have adopted a policy of selling my products, or my books, for now exclusively through my own website. So I invite you to 365lekcjireligii.pl. They are not available yet, and these calendars will not be sold in bookstores. I hope that in the new year I will find a way to get the book into bookstores.

We recommend it: 365 days described briefly. Every day you can tear off a page; it’s a very nice thing. Thank you, Rafał, for the conversation. And what about it—have a merry, peaceful holiday?Of course. As you know, I write provocatively on Facebook: I worship the sun, meaning that I have returned to certain religious rudiments of our human civilization, and since the sun is reborn on December 24/25, Christmas fits perfectly here.

All the best!

Thank you, thank you for the conversation.